Owyhee County

By Robert L. Deen

The sprawling high desert wilderness of southwestern Idaho was virtually unknown to whites in 1863, when Mike Jordan and a band of placer miners dipped their pans into the creek that bears his name and found gold. The electrifying news spread, and the people came. Towns sprang up overnight on the mountaintops. Some disappeared almost as quickly as they had appeared. "Men needed to work the mines!" cried Idaho's newspapers. The word went out, and the miners came from Nevada, California, Colorado, and across the West. Soon the great mines of War Eagle Mountain rivaled Nevada's fabled Comstock Lode. With the exception of Silver City, one of America's largest intact ghost towns, the boomtowns, as well as the mines, are gone; however, descendants of the miners remain. Owyhee County is the size of Delaware and Connecticut combined--7,679 square miles--with a population of only 11,500. It is a rarely visited land of few roads and fewer people, sagebrush desert, deep basalt canyons, romantic vistas, and mysterious mountains that still hide their gold and silver.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
• Release date: May 25, 2015
• ISBN: 9781439651544

Robert L. Deen

Author Robert L. Deen has collaborated with the Owyhee County Historical Society to illustrate the region's romantic history, featuring images from the society's extensive photographic archives.

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INTRODUCTION

Owyhee County is a sprawling, slightly mysterious and relatively unexplored region of high intermountain desert located in the southwestern corner of Idaho. Although larger than the state of Vermont—7,697 square miles—there are fewer than 12,000 residents. At its height in the 1880s, during the mining boom, Owyhee County was among the most populous places in Idaho. Today, it is among the least, at 1.4 persons per square mile. Few roads penetrate its interior, and visitors are largely restricted to the hardy and adventurous. Travel beyond the few paved highways is by four-wheel drive, all-terrain vehicle, dune buggy, motorcycle, and horseback.

The county is part of a larger desert region referred to by locals as ION country, an acronym of Idaho, Oregon, and Nevada, where the three states meet.

The Owyhee Mountains dominate a landscape of sagebrush and basalt canyons, with Hayden Peak reaching 8,403 feet above sea level. The Snake River forms the county’s northern border from Oregon to just west of Glens Ferry.

The Owyhee Wilderness Area, created by the Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009, is the second-largest US Wilderness Area (that is not located within a National Forest, National Park, or National Wildlife Refuge).

Owyhee County has a rich history that began with Native American culture stretching back more than 10,000 years, interrupted by a massive influx of whites drawn by the discovery of silver and gold lodes exceeded only by the Comstock discovery in Nevada. Silver City was one of many gold rush–era mining towns, but it remains today as possibly the largest intact ghost town in the West. Mining followed a boom and bust cycle into the 1920s. A few mines remain active to this day, but mining was replaced by ranching, agriculture, and the building of major water projects in the early 20th century.

Interestingly, the name Owyhee is not a Native American term; it comes from an early anglicization of the native Hawaiian word for Hawai’i.

When Europeans first interacted with the Hawaiian Islands in the late 1700s, they referred to the natives as Owyhees. Much admired for their strong physiques and skills on the water, many were recruited to serve on European sailing ships. This brought them to the American Northwest coast and the Columbia River, participating in the fur-trapping trade.

During the early 1800s, Donald Mackenzie of the Northwest Company annually led a trapping party into the Snake River country of Oregon and Idaho. In 1819, three Owyhees joined the annual expedition, and during that winter they left the main party to explore the unknown area of what since has been called the Owyhee River. They disappeared and were presumed dead. Their fate remains a mystery. In memory of their lost comrades, British fur trappers began to call the region Owyhee.

During the 1840s, the Oregon Trail followed two routes through Idaho, one of which was the southern bank of the Snake River along what is now Owyhee County’s northern border. Hundreds of thousands traveled the Oregon Trail, and many novices who used it to reach the California gold fields in 1849 would return to Idaho in later years as experienced miners.

Native Americans had populated the region for thousands of years, and whites encountered the Paiute and Shoshoni Bannock tribes. The Bannock War of 1878, which cost of lives of more than 40 settlers (three in Owyhee County), climaxed locally at the battle of South Mountain in the Owyhees. Local volunteers from Silver City engaged a force of approximately 50 Bannock warriors on the slopes of a mountain near the mining communities. Bannock War Chief Buffalo Horn was killed during the struggle, and the hostiles moved southwest to join their Paiute allies, who together continued hostilities in western Oregon.

In 1863, Michael Jordan discovered gold on the creek that bears his name. That led to the discovery of gold and silver lodes higher up, most notably at War Eagle Mountain, and a mining boom spawned the cities of Ruby and Silver City, DeLamar, Wagontown, Dewey, Boonetown, and Fairview.

The mining towns became the home of colorful characters and events. When the shafts of two competing gold mines inadvertently intersected in 1866, the War under the Mountain commenced, resulting in several deaths and requiring the intervention of Idaho’s governor and federal troops.

Col. W.H. Dewey, who as a young man walked to Silver City all the way from Virginia City, Nevada, became a leading figure and promoter of the mining industry. He founded the town of Dewey and was briefly imprisoned after shooting a local bartender in what supporters claimed was a plot to take over his mining interests.

Mining magnate J.R. DeLamar, the Monte Cristo of Idaho, founded the town of DeLamar and operated the famous Trade Dollar Mine, which extracted millions of dollars of gold and silver bullion. After serving as a state senator in Idaho’s first legislature, DeLamar moved to New York, where he was known on Wall Street as the man of mystery. The New York mansion he built was thought to be an inspiration for Gatsby’s house in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby.

During the 1800s, the mining region quickly became one of the most populous areas of Idaho, but as the ore played out the towns faded and for the most part disappeared. Today, the region is one of Idaho’s most sparsely populated regions, with the remaining residents scattered on small homesteads,